Doom and Doom II 2020 re-release

7 minutes ago, Egg Boy said:

Strange that they would extend the limits rather than remove them altogether.

That's 5 minutes of work compared to several hours of programming and testing for altering all the limits to be dynamic.

2 hours ago, Egg Boy said:

I do wonder, is split screen a thing on the switch ports? That would be a good time.

Yup, 4 players. You can use all three controller configurations too (Pro, dual joycons and single horizontal). Splitscreen applies to all platforms excluding mobile for obvious reasons. 

9 minutes ago, Egg Boy said:

Strange that they would extend the limits rather than remove them altogether.

It's so much easier to just increase the value of a #DEFINE somewhere than refactor the code to not use a static array. You don't have to run as many regression tests to check for unwanted side effects, some of which are potentially demo-breaking. (And I'm not even talking of glitched demos where you need to emulate an overflow.)

Remember also that since they're stuffing it into third-party proprietary software, they can't just take the code from PrBoom+ or some other strongly limit-removing port, the GPL prevents that. "But", you may say, "isn't Boom also available under the original Doom Source License? Which allows closed-source?" And yeah, it is, and even he earlier releases of MBF are. However, this license prevents commercial use. Too bad.

1 minute ago, Graf Zahl said:

 

That's 5 minutes of work compared to several hours of programming and testing for altering all the limits to be dynamic.

 

Thank you for clearing that up, I already figured it was more convenient to raise the limits, since that is what they did, but I'm no programmer. It does make me wonder if they're planning to eventually remove the limits for this current port, in order to be more inclusive of amateur-created add-ons. Playing Ancient Aliens on a console would be kind of surreal (especially for those involved I imagine).

45 minutes ago, Egg Boy said:

It does make me wonder if they're planning to eventually remove the limits for this current port, in order to be more inclusive of amateur-created add-ons.

Just making the limits "soft" (the game continues to work when limit is reached but with some visual glitching) would be a massive improvement.

1 hour ago, Edward850 said:

Splitscreen applies to all platforms excluding mobile for obvious reasons. 

It could make sense for something like the Surface Duo, when it comes out.

A bunch of limits have been raised beyond the BFG limits, but nothing was made dynamic yet. Compatibility with limits removing mods is going to be spotty and obviously dehacked is not available, but some do work (SIGIL doesn't run in BFG ed). With the amount of engines and engine standards out there, it's never going to replace the need for source ports, but as AlexMax pointed out, an option that doesn't require you to download one from the start is nice (which is why it was included for free if you owned the DOS versions). I hope having some mods accessible in-game will encourage people to search for what else is out there, and lead to awesome stuff like Remnant and Lost Civilization that we can't so easily support.

Here's hoping that games get re-released officially on Steam/GOG one day...

So is anyone playing these new versions with a joypad and can confirm whether the games have joypad rumble? I play GZDoom with a Steam controller and would love to have rumble as an option, perhaps rumble support could be extracted from these new versions and added to GZDoom? Probably wishful thinking but one can dream.

2 hours ago, 6DB said:

perhaps rumble support could be extracted from these new versions and added to GZDoom?

No, because the source code of these new versions is not open.

I noticed the mouse aiming feels a bit off; does it have mouse acceleration or smoothing on? If so, there needs to be an option to turn it off.

10 hours ago, MFG38 said:

I'm inclined to think it's safe to assume that Bethesda is just trying to cash in on the Doom franchise

They bought the developer and the IP for this exact reason. That's how companies work - release products to make profit off of them.

10 hours ago, MFG38 said:

by even thinking about re-releasing the classic Doom games.

What's bad about that?

10 hours ago, MFG38 said:

Given the fact that Doom Eternal is slated to come out in just over 2 months as well, this reeks of a desperate attempt to make a quick buck while we wait for that.

The console ports were released all the way back in May; even if people didn't like the way it was released, they did like the fact that it got released at all on current generation of console hardware. The PC version was released (with little to no fanfare) probably to satisfy the demand of those of us who did want to see this version on PC.

10 hours ago, MFG38 said:

but frankly this beloved franchise deserves more respectful treatment than this.

More respectful how?

Consider this:

Most big companies don't even look towards boomer shooters. Warner Bros. owns the Blood IP: I doubt we'll be seeing Caleb in a new game any time soon. All Gearbox can offer with Duke Nukem is cameos in other games. This is not the most popular genre outside of its community, the new wave of boomer shooters are all indie. Bethesda on the other hand? Bethesda scrapped DOOM 4 because it was "too Call of Duty" and ordered id to start over, which ended up resulting in DOOM '16. Now we're expecting a big budget AAA sequel to that game which I'm cautiously optimistic about. The series also gets rereleases on consoles so that no matter what your preferred platform is, you could always get your DOOM fix, be it the high-speed rush of DOOM 1, non-stop slaughter of DOOM 2 or the dark corridors of DOOM 3. Are those rereleases perfect? Well, no, but at the same time, they are far more than id was willing to give us back when they were indie. Hell, I always thought that such a rerelease is long overdue for the PC platform as well, given that games like Duke3D or Strife got them. Of course you can just use a source port, but an easy out-of-the-box solution is always a good thing, especially for the newbies, provided that it doesn't take away the source port option. Not to mention that the constant publicity they get coupled with the games' availability ends up bringing more of said newbies to the community, which is always great.

And, I gotta be honest... given the treatment their other franchises have gotten (TES haven't seen a mainline game for 8+ years now, Dishonored is dead, Prey is stillborn, Wolfenstein got bad, Quake is nonexistent, Fallout is a disaster), I'd say DOOM is the one franchise Bethesda respects the most. Again, are they perfect about it? No, but they are clearly trying, which is evident in how this particular version has gotten from being subpar to the best console version of DOOM.

4 hours ago, 6DB said:

So is anyone playing these new versions with a joypad and can confirm whether the games have joypad rumble? I play GZDoom with a Steam controller and would love to have rumble as an option, perhaps rumble support could be extracted from these new versions and added to GZDoom? Probably wishful thinking but one can dream.

I just checked with my 360 controller and it was indeed rumbling.  No idea if it works with a Steam controller though.

1 hour ago, Allard said:

I noticed the mouse aiming feels a bit off; does it have mouse acceleration or smoothing on? If so, there needs to be an option to turn it off.

It might be a side effect of interpolation.  How does it feel compared to something like uncapped Crispy Doom?

9 minutes ago, AlexMax said:

It might be a side effect of interpolation.  How does it feel compared to something like uncapped Crispy Doom?

Heavier, I guess is the right word. It's harder to start a turn and harder to stop it. As I said, seems like mouse acceleration.

16 hours ago, Edward850 said:

Ah yes, all those uncapped 60FPS source ports with add-on support you could get on... *checks list*... Xbox One.

i see

but does actually play doom in xbox

11 minutes ago, qweqioweuo123 said:

i see

 

but does actually play doom in xbox

... Yes? It was ported to Switch, PS4, Xbox One, iPhone, Android and PC.

Haven't played it.

14 minutes ago, qweqioweuo123 said:

i see

  

but does actually play doom in xbox

You'd be surprised by the number of people whose first exposure to DOOM was through a console port.  Not everybody got their start playing the DOS version or through a PC source port., some players got their start playing the 32X version, Playstation version, SNES version, you name it.  I'm sure if you search Doomworld you'll find threads where community members tell their first experience playing the game, and a good number of them mention a console port as their first exposure.

EDIT: Irrelevant. Nothing to see here. Move along.

12 hours ago, MFG38 said:

I'm inclined to think it's safe to assume that Bethesda is just trying to cash in on the Doom franchise by even thinking about re-releasing the classic Doom games.

So you are saying a company paid a lot of money for another company and it's IP and now they are trying to make money from said IP? Keen deduction there, Sherlock.

Companies like to make money. I am constantly dumbfounded the number of times I see comments online like "Oh Company X is just trying to make money!". Ya think? That is number one reason for existing. Sure you can think a given way of doing it is wrong, but ultimately being critical of a company trying to make money out of something they invested in is like having a go at a Lion for picking off the wounded Gazelle at the back of the pack. But you know what you and other consumers can do? Vote with your wallet.

And @Nevander? Dude, let it go. The other people in this thread have given you the very practical and legal reasons why they have done what they did. I get your point, and you are not necessarily wrong. Ideally, this should not happen. But I understand why it did. Make your point once, and move on. Raging about it in a forum thread will accomplish precisely nothing.

10 hours ago, Egg Boy said:

Thank you for clearing that up, I already figured it was more convenient to raise the limits, since that is what they did, but I'm no programmer. It does make me wonder if they're planning to eventually remove the limits for this current port, in order to be more inclusive of amateur-created add-ons. Playing Ancient Aliens on a console would be kind of surreal (especially for those involved I imagine).

As Graf already said, that would require significant rewrites to the code and so is unlikely to happen due to the time investment required. When Boom was made, they completely restructured key aspects of the renderer to remove the limits. I am basically an amateur hacker when it comes to C programming. Even I could tweak those limits and recompile the code. Changing the renderer would require the input of someone like Lee Killough who worked on Boom and MBF and (if memory serves) did the major optimisations. You need to be a very good coder to be able to take code written by someone else, learn about it, and then figure out how to make it better without your changes affecting something else.

9 minutes ago, Murdoch said:

So you are saying a company paid a lot of money for another company and it's IP and now they are trying to make money from said IP? Keen deduction there, Sherlock. 

Companies like to make money. I am constantly dumbfounded the number of times I see comments online like "Oh Company X is just trying to make money!". Ya think? That is number one reason for existing. Sure you can think a given way of doing it is wrong, but ultimately being critical of a company trying to make money out of something they invested in is like having a go at a Lion for picking off the wounded Gazelle at the back of the pack. But you know what you and other consumers can do? Vote with your wallet.

Personally, I don't like these kinds of arguments because I think it is completely possible for something to be a cynical and tone-deaf cash grab.

The thing is, I honestly don't think that's what's happening here.  The developers clearly cared enough about the port to go back to it and fix a lot of its shortcomings, and at this point I think that this port is probably the best official port of the game that has ever been released.

I was playing this on my Switch last night in bed and having a blast. I really appreciate the QoL improvements, having so much DOOM at my fingertips no matter where I go is pretty awesome. The green cross looked weird to me at first, I think it might be a little too bright green, but I'm already over it like I was with the pill.

It's a shame they didn't release this on Steam with 'cheevos and all that. I would have bought it. Again. For the 100th fucking time. What is wrong with me?

23 hours ago, guitardz said:

I hope it doesn't come to that, because it could easily mean the end of Doom modding.

Trying really, really hard not to be rude here... but this is a deeply silly thing to say. I cannot fathom how you got to this conclusion. Zenimax/Bethesda would have to physically show up to every owner's house and destroy their copies. They would have to get Valve and GOG to force delete them from people's libraries and they have no legal basis for such a request. They would have to somehow remove every map editor and source port from the Internet. Hours upon hours of futile effort and cost.

Even before the source release, people reverse engineered the game and made Dehacked for tweaking the EXE. They made DEU for designing levels. DeuTex for changing graphics. id did not directly support modding from day one.

Zenimax/Bethesda could not kill Doom modding if they wanted to.

36 minutes ago, AlexMax said:

I think it is completely possible for something to be a cynical and tone-deaf cash grab.

Of course it is. As I said in my original post, you can not like how and why something is being done by a company. But Zenimax spent a ton of cash on id, and they are going to want to get some return on that investment. To expect otherwise is idiotic. But cash grabs only work if people buy them. If people pay money for something, then it proves demand was there.

36 minutes ago, AlexMax said:

The thing is, I honestly don't think that's what's happening here. 

There is definitely some care here which is good to see.

4 hours ago, Murdoch said:

Zenimax/Bethesda could not kill Doom modding if they wanted to.

It was a worst case scenario thought that I posted before someone told me that this release comes with DOSBox versions with usable IWADS intact as well.

9 minutes ago, guitardz said:

It was a worst case scenario thought that I posted before someone told me that this release comes with DOSBox versions with usable IWADS intact as well.

But why is that the qualifier, when the new release also has usable and intact IWADs by blatant technical requirement? Or do you think Doom physically and completely has been ported to Unity instead of what it actually is and has been explained a thousand times of it being the original engine running as a DLL inside Unity?

3 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

But why is that the qualifier, when the new release also has usable IWADs by blatant technical requirement?

I'm pretty done with the conversation here.  I have been since some of my posts were deleted.  My current mood toward this is one of not really caring.  My mind has been changed, let's move on.

1 hour ago, Edward850 said:

the new release also has usable and intact IWADs

Not sure intact is the word I'd use.

EDIT: I just want to add, I'm not stupid despite some of you maybe thinking so. To tell the truth, I'm just being difficult. After making this post and continuing to drag this out I know it's a pointless exercise. I still stand by my beliefs and hate the changes but there's nothing that I can do about it. Just thought you guys should hear this from me so you don't hate my guts or something.

There's a very simple solution to your problem: Just pretend that the new versions do not exist and stop thinking about them.

Why does it bother you? You already got the game in its "pure" form.

In addition, do you need this new engine version? I surely don't, it's a massive step backwards from the available choice of source ports and besides, why spend money for this game again? I paid for them once a quarter of a century ago, and what I got back then still works fine.